Yoshira Ornelas Van Horne, BS, MS, PhD

CIRAD

Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Services
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Dr. Ornelas van Horne, Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, is an exposure scientist and environmental justice scholar. Her research focuses on addressing unequal exposures to harmful contaminants that affect structurally marginalized communities. She is committed to building health equity through community-driven research and is passionate about research translation and communication. To this end, her work not only characterizes inequities in cumulative exposures but also supports community-driven solutions and training efforts. Her CIRAD/RCMAR pilot investigates cognitive effects of residential segregation, which produces that racialized and minoritized groups are exposed to environmental contaminants in systemized ways, resulting in overburden of diseases via increases in air pollution, proximity to hazardous waste sites, lack of clean drinking water, and limited access to green spaces. While residential segregation increases exposure in environmentally vulnerable neighborhoods, much of the focus has been on the connection between individual environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution, metals, green spaces) and brain health rather than on the long-term effects of environmental racism on cognitive functioning. This pilot investigates childhood environmental racism and its association with adult cognition to determine how environmental racism trajectories throughout childhood are associated with ADRD risk among middle-aged adults.